Build Power & Show Power through Mass Participatory Bold Action

To show our power, on May 1st, 2012, we will be organizing for such a mass participatory and bold collective action: a national general strike, mass boycott, student strike/ walk-out and mass day of action. We will be organizing within our unions- or informal workplace organizations where there’s no union or the union isn’t supportive- to hold a one-day general strike. Where a strike is not possible, we will be organizing people to call in sick, or take a personal day, as part of a coordinated “sick-out”. Those who are students will be walking-out of their schools (or not showing up in the first place). In the community, we will be holding a mass boycott and refusing to make any purchase on that day.

The following is a joint statement from the First of May Anarchist Alliance and The Utopian: A Journal of Anarchism and Libertarian Socialism.

We should strive to convince the movement that the problem in the US today is not just Wall Street or the corporations or the fact that the economic system is somehow being “gamed” or “rigged” by tricky selfish individuals. We need to explain that the cause of the crisis is the capitalist system itself, a system in which production is carried on only when it results in profits, the vast majority of which go to the tiny elite that runs the country. Correspondingly, we should work to persuade the movement that its ultimate aim should be the radical democratization of our entire society, in other words, a revolution in which the vast majority of people seize control of the economy and the country as a whole from the rich and disperse power and direct control of all aspects of social life as widely as possible. As a result, we should propose and support radical demands that both point in this direction and unite the broadest sectors of the population.

Appeal for solidarity from the Madison, Wisconsin Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) branch:

International Capital is confronting International Labor on the world stage. Our neighbors in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia have recently shown the world how to bring governments and rulers to their knees. As the struggle unfolds, we are learning from each other minute-to-minute.
In Madison, The Industrial Workers of the World are active in a fight against Governor Scott Walker, who serves the infamous Koch brothers and the wider corporate interests. We believe it will take a General Strike to stop Walker's legislation and strengthen the labor movement. Governor Walker and conservative legislators have pushed through a plan that will virtually destroy all unions for public employees, except for firefighters, police, and the state patrol. They also plan to severely cut welfare and medical programs, and reduce rights for immigrants.

We need to let union and non-union workers, the unemployed, and all disenfranchised people of the world know that true power does not rest in the marble halls of the capitol building or corporate boardrooms. It is through unity and action that our hearts and minds become the pathways of power and resistance.

Debate
"The claim that "syndicalist unions broke off from mainstream federations to form 'purely revolutionary' unions, cutting themselves off from the mass of workers" doesn't hold up, though it does conform to the Leninist orthodoxy of "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder. There were many countries where the syndicalist unions were the majority--such as Portugal, Spain, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru and Brazil. Syndicalist unions in South Africa, such as the Industrial Workers of Africa (modeled on the Industrial Workers of the World), were the only unions that organized native African workers, who were excluded from the white craft unions.
At the time of the mass occupation of the factories in Italy in September 1920, the USI (Italian Syndicalist Union) was claiming 800,000 members, and the factory councils formed throughout Italy in those events were mostly organized by the USI. Moreover, it was the anarcho-syndicalists who initiated a militia movement ("arditti del popolo") to fight Mussolini's fascist squads. But the Communists didn't cooperate, and the Socialist Party capitulated to fascism.

Once it became clear that Trump was going to become the president of the USA, my Facebook feed became cluttered with attempts to understand how that could possibly happen. How could a white supremacist, misogynist and utterly transparent snake oil salesman accumulate so many votes? Those on the left both inside and outside the borders of the USA struggled to understand what had happened.
[Listen to the audio of this entire article]
A common conclusion in too many of these pieces is that the left needs to reach out, and listen to the concerns of, those who voted for him as a priority. In a similar fashion to how sections of the left evaluated Brexit, they see a working class anti-establishment rebellion in the Trump vote from what they term the ‘white working class’. They believe that component was won by Trump because it has been neglected by the left - often, they will assert, because the rest of the left was distracted by what they call identity politics.
This is a simple explanatory story that is particularly attractive to those sections of the left that have a nostalgic yearning for an imagined past of pure class struggle, shorn of internal concerns around oppression. But the concept of masses of otherwise progressive working class voters opting for Trump on economic grounds is a myth. The attractiveness of that myth and its promotion has more to do with the hostility of that section of the left towards the influence of intersectional feminism than anything more substantive. That hostility has caused them to seek out anecdotes and exceptional regions and present them as the typical story that defines the election just as liberal Hillary Clinton campaigners have focused in on Facebook false news stories as the cause of her defeat.

A strategy to defend our communities and to challenge Trump begins with us, the exploited workers. Together we hold the solution to Trump and to the bigger problems of capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. Some sections of the ruling classes may share our desire to get rid of Trump, but only so that they can put another capitalist in the White House and then have us go through this cycle of crisis all over again. While we may end up marching with these people in the streets for the next four years, we know that our allies are those who also work to build the independent power of the exploited classes, not those who want us to pin our hopes on political candidates.
We must push for greater unity of working-class social movements. We need to reach out to others who are doing organizing in our areas and talk to them about working together. We should push for social movement organizations that we are part of – like labor unions, Black Lives Matter chapters, immigrant rights organizations – to organize city-wide summits to plan how to support each other and how to coordinate opposition to Trump. Between now and January 20th, we should organize as much national discussion and coordination between social movements and revolutionary organizations as possible. We should plan for mass protests on Trump’s inauguration day, and we should see these protests as organizing tools to continue building unity and to draw people into the day-to-day organizing in our communities where we will really be building the long-term power that we need to be a threat to the state.

Across the US, from cities to rural areas, it is imperative that anarchists and anti-authoritarians strive to build organizations to battle the emboldened far right, to advocate through militant action the needs of working-class communities, and to combat state repression.

What Needs to Be Done:
1. No to National “healing”, working with, or a grace period for the Trump Regime
2. Take to the streets – build a militant resistance
3. Build working-class defense organizations that resist racist attacks, sexual assault, immigration and homeland security raids and deportations, police brutality and state repression
4. Agitate and organize for workers actions – including a general strike against Trump
5. No to containment of the struggle back into the Democratic Party, electoralism and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

The Standing Rock Sioux in the U.S. have been fighting against the construction of a major gas pipeline which would threaten their water supply and violate their sacred sites. They have organized popular direct action against the construction company and the state and inspired people throughout the country and the world.

Since the 45th Anniversary of the Attica prison riots – September 9th, 2016 – an estimated 24,000 people have been on strike in the USA. If you haven’t heard of the strike you are not alone. It has mostly been ignored by the mainstream media and even much of the Left. This is because the strikers are made up of a group who usually don’t feature in strikes: prison workers.

Donald Trump and those who follow him have shown certain specific traits of a fascist movement. Does that make Trump or the Trumpets into fascists? What is fascism? How is it counterposed to bourgeois democracy? Is there likely to be a fascist movement in the U.S.A.? How do we fight fascism?

Prisoners from across the United States have just released this call to action for a nationally coordinated prisoner workstoppage against prison slavery to take place on September 9th, 2016.

This is a Call to Action Against Slavery in America

In one voice, rising from the cells of long term solitary confinement, echoed in the dormitories and cell blocks from Virginia to Oregon, we prisoners across the United States vow to finally end slavery in 2016.

There are non-anarchist radicals who advocate creating a new, third, party, to replace the Democrats at least. They share many of the values of anarchists. However anarchists regard this as a mistaken strategy.

Review of Frank's "Listen, Liberal." A leading liberal journalist, he exposes the Democratic Party as dominated by a section of the capitalist class, namely the top of the professional-managerial sector. He demonstrates its acceptance of inequality and its rejection of the working class.

The case of Kshama Sawant shows that no matter how good the candidate, business as usual rules in elected office
This article is part of an ongoing series called “Socialist faces in high places” looking at the left in relation to the electoral path and state power.

There is a new approach on the U.S. Left, which rejects both capitalism and state socialism. In several ways it resembles anarchism. It has been promoted by The Next System Project, and has been critiqued recently by Sam Gindin--who makes some insightful comments, but also demonstrates limitations.

In recent decades, there have been efforts to "rehabilitate" the U.S. Communist Party as an historical model for the Left. Anti-authoritarian socialists and anarchists find this troubling. Whle the CP did some good things it also did some very bad things. A brief summary of its history demonstrates that and explains why this is.